


Pain As Sharp As Crystal

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Because Trent Ikithon is The Worst, Body Horror, Brief mention of self-harm, Chronic Pain, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Spoilers through episode 75 of Campaign 2, The Rest Of The Nein Feature But Not Heavily, medical experiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-08 04:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Caleb is used to being in pain, the ache in his forearms a constant companion ever since the experiments. When he hasn’t cast a spell in awhile it’s a distant murmur, a whisper in a nearby room. After a battle it’s a jagged scream like someone shouting in his ear, making it hard to think of anything else. Lately though. Lately—





	Pain As Sharp As Crystal

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this the day after episode 74, after the scene in the Plexas Post, because Liam/Caleb's sad, pained expression as he rubbed at his arms just hit me in a very particular way. Then @sketch-bird on Tumblr made [this](http://sketch-bird.tumblr.com/post/187041171628/sketch-bird-crystalline-im-always-sad-for) beautiful piece of art and were gracious enough to allow me to use a bit of that imagery in my fic when I asked! (Seriously go look at all their art, it's *amazing*.)

“Caleb?”

They’re returning from the Overcrow Apothecary after a scouting mission which thankfully and surprisingly had gone well, at least in that no fights had broken out. Beau is looking into the bag of whatever she’s stolen and there’s a smile slowly crossing her face, but it’s Nott that wants Caleb’s attention. She’s holding up her own stolen bag of something.

“Do you have any idea what this is?”

“Let me see.”

Nott gives Caleb the bag. “Jester thought it might be gem dust, but I don’t know.”

Caleb opens the bag and the moment he lays eyes on the shimmering dust inside—

_“Residuum is a rare, much sought after material that is useful in a variety of ways. Ground residuum can be a replacement for powerful and expensive spell components, but I believe that to be a frivolous use of such a hard to acquire material, not when the refined crystals hold so much more—“ Master Ikithon looks up from the green crystals on his desk and into Bren’s eyes. “—Potential.”_

Caleb’s arms ache. They always ache, but now suddenly they burn, as if the old memories have lit a match under his skin. His hands begin to tremble, but he does not drop the bag. There is an incredible, nearly ridiculous amount of residuum powder contained within, and he will not ruin it by spilling it in the street.

“This is ahhhh— an incredibly powerful magical reagent. Useful for enchanting. It is made from powdered whitestone, which comes from all away across the sea, in Tal’dorei, from a certain mountain range. It is very rare over here.” He tries to hand the bag back to Nott, but she just shakes her head.

“It’s for you,” she tells him. “I stole it and I’m giving it to you.”

Caleb’s arms begin to itch as well as burn. “It is for the group,” he says firmly, carefully, keeping the shaking in his hands from entering his voice. When she doesn’t take the bag back from him, Caleb reluctantly tucks it into his coat, his hands kneading at his arms as soon as they are empty. The burning feeling fades and the ache dulls under the gentle pressure, and he wishes a bit that he had not made such a big deal of removing his bandages from his arms. Tying them tightly had helped a bit with the ache, and they had protected his skin when he was overcome with the maddening urge to scratch at his scars.

When he finds his fingers wandering over the faint ridges of his scars later, he summons Frumpkin and buries his hands in the cat’s fur instead.

—————

Caleb stares through the small window in the door of the cell, the magic of the transmuter’s stone in his pocket enabling him to see in the near darkness. All he can make out is the vague shape of a human woman, her head bowed, her hair obscuring her face. Astrid’s hair had been that long once, when they had been in school, before Master— before _Trent_ had selected them. He cannot make out the color of the woman’s hair, the magic only grants him sight, not the ability to see colors beyond black and white and gray. He cannot see the features of her face.

Caleb snaps his fingers, and then there is dim light in the room, two small floating orbs hovering not quite near the chained figure. There are colors now, brown armor, dark blood, but he still can’t quite make out the color of her hair. She shifts at the appearance of the light, but whether it is a conscious or unconscious act, Caleb couldn’t say. She doesn’t look up when he speaks to her in his first tongue, but she shifts again, and Caleb knows then that’s she’s awake.

“I need you to talk to me,” Caleb says, and is frustrated anew when she finally _does _speak, because her voice is so rough with pain that he can’t tell, he just can’t _tell_ if this is who he thinks it is. He doesn’t think it’s Astrid, doesn’t want it to _be_ Astrid, but yet, if it is— if it is—

“Astrid,” he says, and the name is heavy in his mouth, weighed down with years of memory and emotion.

The head lifts a fraction in recognition or surprise. Not enough, not nearly enough. “Who is this, that knows Astrid?”

Caleb wants to scream. His head aches, his arms ache, both throbbing in time with his rapidly beating heart. “Look at me.” He’s not begging. He’s not pleading. It’s an order, one that she does not obey.

Caleb snaps his fingers and Frumpkin appears in the cell, silently walking over to look at the prisoner when Caleb commands him to. He _needs _to see, needs to know, but even through his cat’s eyes all he can see is the hair over her face, a split lip, nothing distinctive. And then he sees the scars on her forearms.

_Astrid’s scars are red and raw, and Bren hears her breath hitch in her throat as he rub salve into them, his fingers pressing deep. She had done the same for him, weeks ago, when his wounds had still been new. His scars are pink now, but his arms still ache. He believes the ache will fade with time, that some day casting magic will no longer cause his arms to burn for minutes or hours afterwards. And if it doesn’t, well, Master Ikithon says that pain is something to be overcome if one wishes to be great._

_“We will overcome this,” Bren whispers as he wraps the bandages tightly around Astrid’s arms. “We are strong.”_

_Astrid takes a shuddering breath and leans her forehead against Bren’s own. “We are strong,” she echoes._

Caleb is not surprised when the guards will not open the cell. The Dynasty’s favor only extends so far, it is only to be expected. He hears his friends try to gently argue the point with the guards, but their voices sound distant and muffled. Through it all he does not take his eyes from the prisoner.

“Do you know Bren Aldric Ermendrud?” Caleb asks, and the syllables of his birth name feel as sharp as the crystals in his arms as they emerge from his throat.

“Very well,” the prisoner says, and Caleb’s fingers tighten on the edges of the window of the cell.

“Who was he?” He asks, his voice calm, even.

“I don’t know,” she says, and her head lifts all the way, finally, to look him in the eye. Her hair, not brown, falls away from a face that is unfamiliar to him.

It is not Astrid. Caleb is awash with relief and disappointment so sudden that he feels weak with it. It is all he can do to keep standing, to keep staring at the prisoner who is smiling at him now.

“I’ve heard things about you, Bren.” Her smile grows larger, even as her split lip opens again and begins to bleed. “Welcome back.”

Caleb says something, he knows he does but he cannot recall what, just that there had been sounds and words and then he was leaning against a wall, breathing too much, too fast. What has she heard? Does Trent tell his pupils about his brightly shining star who burned out? The phoenix who was consumed by his own flame and never rose again? Is he a ghost story, the thing that will come and burn you in your bed if you don’t attend to your studies? Is he a cruel joke? Bren the failure, Bren the broken—

“Caleb, are you all right?” Fjord asks from far away. “You don’t seem well.”

Caleb wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He wants to rip the door from its hinges and grab the prisoner by the shoulders and—what? Shake her? Tell her he’s sorry that he failed and that Master— no, Trent, that monster who wears a man’s shape, is still allowed to do this? That he is still allowed to take children and twist them into the shape he desires?

“Who is she to you?” Fjord asks, and Caleb wishes he would stop talking. The concern in Fjord’s voice nearly undoes him.

_She is my failure made flesh_, Caleb thinks, and he has the idea that maybe he’s also saying something of the sort to Fjord out loud. _She is a mirror showing me what I was supposed to be, what I could have been. In another time, in another life, it might have been me in that cell instead, hate for the Dynasty in my heart and blood on my teeth as I snarled at my captors._

Caleb controls his breathing and gets back to his feet, asking the prisoner a few more questions, knowing she won’t give him any answers, knowing better than to ask for her name.

“Some of us get tired of macabre fairy tales. So you enjoy your mouth full of lies when they choke it out of you.” His voice does not tremble, does not give away that his heart is beating hummingbird fast, that his hands are clenched tightly so he does not scratch the skin from his arms. Trent would be so proud of him for that, and the thought turns his stomach as he turns away from the prisoner and walks back up the hallway.

Caleb’s arms still ache and itch hours later as he wanders the streets, Frumpkin a purring scarf around his neck. There is blood underneath his fingernails, a weakness of only a moment, a failure of only an instant.

_I’ve heard things about you, Bren._

Caleb shudders and buries his hands in Frumpkin’s fur once more.

————

Caleb tries his best to divorce his emotions and memories from the word _residuum _whenever Fjord or Caduceus or Nott speak about it. It is simply a useful material. It will help Caduceus on his spiritual quest somehow. His memory is very good, more than good, which means, ironically, that he also has to be good at _not_ recalling things when the occasion warrants. There are times when he is alone that he can let the past overwhelm him, when he can be selfish, but now is not one of those times. There is too much to be done. So he takes all those memories and thoughts and writes them in a book in his mind, and then places that book on a shelf in a room. His mental library is filled with such rooms, though only a few have doors that lock. This door is stone instead of wood, and it has many locks.

So Caleb is genuinely interested when Nott experiments with the residuum at the Kiln, and actually finds himself curious about how one would refine it into glass, if not by heat. When Caduceus asks Ava about residuum at the Plexus Post, Caleb doesn’t even blink. Of course Caduceus would ask. Caleb himself hopes that the woman has what Caduceus needs, and he’s already mentally figuring out how much gold he could offer to Caduceus to help cover the cost if need be when Ava comes back to the counter with many things, but one of them is a box that she opens to reveal five perfect crystals of residuum. They seem to glow faintly green in the shop’s dim light.

Somewhere in Caleb’s mind, a book falls off a shelf. The locks click open, one after another, the door creaking open just a crack.

Caleb feels his mouth go dry even as Caduceus smiles in delight and satisfaction.

“May I—“ Caleb swallows. “May I see those, please?”

His hands do not shake when he picks up the crystal. It’s lighter than it looks, and while the facets appear smooth, their is the slightest hint of roughness beneath his fingertips.

The book in his mind flips open and the pages turn, as if by an unseen hand. The words flow together, the ink running, forming pictures that move.

_Bren, young, so very young, so eager to please, holding a crystal in one hand as he casts a spell, Master Ikithon looking on._

_Bren, standing in Master Ikithon’s study, looking at the crystals lined up across the desk before nodding at his master._

_Bren, strapped to a table, jaws locked against a scream, tears streaming down his face like the blood streaming down his arms as Master Ikithon inserts another crystal into his flesh—_

“Thank you,” Caleb hears himself say softly as he hands the crystal back.

While Caduceus and Ava negotiate, Caleb rubs at his arms, feeling the unyielding hardness deep beneath his skin, the _wrongness_ of it, and tries not to shiver,

——————

Caleb is used to being in pain, the ache in his forearms a constant companion ever since the experiments. When he hasn’t cast a spell in awhile it’s a distant murmur, a whisper in a nearby room. After a battle it’s a jagged scream like someone shouting in his ear, making it hard to think of anything else. Lately though. Lately—

He’s in the hut, all of his friends sleeping around him. Tomorrow they have to deal with a dragon. They need their rest. _He _needs his rest if he’s going to be good for anything in the morning. They need his spells. They need _him._ He has to sleep. He cast the spell for the hut hours ago, and the pain in his arms has settled back to the usual, tolerable, dull ache.

He cast Burning Hands long before that, and his hands have not stopped burning with pain since then.

The first twinge in his fingers had started months ago, an occasional mild aching in his joints that made him think of his mother, who hands had often become stiff when rain or snow threatened. He had tried to fool himself into thinking that was all it was, that he was getting older and that was just a thing that happened to people when they got older. Never mind that the pain flared up after he casted spells, just like the pain in his arms, that his fingers had gone from aching to minutes to aching for hours. It was normal. Mundane. Never mind that the pain in his forearms seemed to be creeping by increments up past his elbows, like moss growing over a rock. He has no time for pain, not when there are so many things to be done.

The dream, when it comes, when sleep claims him, starts out normally enough. He’s looking down at his sleeping self, tucked into his bedroll like always. He tries to turn his attention to something else, but there is nothing else to look at, just a blurry white like falling snow, and when he looks back his bedroll is gone. There’s just him, laying there in the shirt and pants he sleeps in. He notices little things, new lines in his face, creases carved from worry and pain, and how much darker his hair has become without sunlight to lighten it.

The glow starts in his arms, a radiance that slowly trickles in lines down into his fingers and up into his shoulders before spreading through his chest, shining through his clothing, hitting his heart and flowing down to outline his ribs, coursing up along his throat and over his face towards his eyes like tears in reverse. At first he thinks it looks beautiful, like if Jester got it in her head to paint on him with watercolors while he was sleeping, but the longer he looks, the more the lines, glowing as green as the crystals in his arms, remind him of other things. Lava running down a mountain, burning everything it touches. Cracks spreading through ice on the verge of shattering. Poison running through his veins, killing him slowly—

Caleb awakes sweating and shaking, the muscles in his arms and hands twitching with small, painful spasms. He curls his arms to his chest and waits out the pain, teeth clenched as tears stream down his cheeks. He can’t wake anyone up. There are things more important than his pain. A dragon to outwit. A sword to reforge. A demon to pursue. A friend to be remade. An Empire to be cleansed.On and on and on. What is his own suffering compared to that? He can overcome this. He can be strong. He _must_ be strong.

——————

“Caleb? Are you all right?”

Caleb stops rubbing his shoulder and gives Beau a small nod.

“Ja, just—ah— a little sore this morning. Must have slept funny.” He claps his hands together softly and gives her a brief smile. “Now, how are we going to get the dragon to breathe on this mithril?”

**Author's Note:**

> I had to re-watch the whole scene with Caleb and the prisoner again for the dialogue in that moment and wow, even over a Skype connection with not the best audio, Liam can still deliver the Feels.
> 
> I *might* add a chapter onto this at some point, but it's finished for the moment.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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